The Death of Gods
by Fledgling
Summary: Oneshot, Alt, post-series. C.C. did not think about stupid things like this. Never. Ever.


Prompt: "the death of gods"

_The Death of Gods_

They died on this island.

On this island, warm mist covered its slopes and palms, through which heat dripped into murky puddles on the mossy floor. On this island, there was always a hush of silence, a collective whisper of dead voices- or maybe it was just the mist and its heavy presence, weighing down, rising up, with every gasp and sigh of the ocean wind.

It seemed like an island where immortals dwelled, and the mortals were sacrificed; where mortals sacrificed themselves, without knowing it. For their terrors morphed into rabid beasts that turned on them and preyed on their weak souls. Fear of death acknowledges death, and thus they ran, faster than ever, toward the ending which they so feared.

But really, here is where gods die.

* * *

When the boy awoke, he was scarred from head to toe.

Once he had been very handsome. He reached an exhausted hand to his bare scalp, too tired even to weep. A croak escaped from his parched throat, the dry tongue sticking in its cave, choking its own passages. He climbed to his feet, black tatters of a uniform hanging from his body.

And he remembered nothing.

When he reached the water, he plunged himself headfirst into the shapeless mirror.

And gasped for breath, and flailed his arms, and the remains of his black tatters fell away from him, sinking into clear, dark depths.

And when the girl found him, he was still in the water, but slumped on top of a shiny black log that looked less scarred than he did.

She knelt down and whispered into his ear. He convulsed, and spat something from his lips. He turned to look at her with feverish, wounded eyes. An unintelligible wail, pitiable and terrible, flew from his lips.

She dragged him from the water, not kindly, but not unkindly, through the forest, up a hill, down a hill, and finally to the ocean. He looked. "The... ocean..." he managed to whisper. She found herself glad that he was capable of words. He slowly turned forlorn eyes back the way they came. "...I... thought-"

"Lelouch," she said, but her voice was carried by the wind, and he didn't hear the sorrow in the cracking voice, nor the apology in the way she said his name. Never had she said it with such emotion before; never was she to repeat it. "I..."

And then there was silence. She stood with her ankles in the lapping tides and her eyes were the source of the ocean's pain, dripping down her face, across her heart, down her legs, and into the water.

* * *

The next morning, Lelouch woke up, and he remembered nothing.

She came to him with an armful of freshly caught fish, dripping from head to toe in salt water. He looked at her, panic convulsing across his face for a moment. "Who are you?" he asked, and his voice sounded nothing like the one she knew.

C.C. froze, dropping a fish. But an instant later her face fell blank.

"You don't know me?" she asked, and it turned out more like a question than she liked. It was meant to be a statement.

He hesitated. Then he shook his head once.

C.C.'s reply was silence; she simply fed him fish, wordlessly proffering it to his hungry lips until he stopped resisting, and finally accepted it directly from C.C.'s outstretched fingertips.

* * *

One morning a few weeks later, C.C. awoke in the sea and didn't know how she got there. She dragged herself out until she was four-legged in the sand, seaweed hair falling in clumpy strands around her face and trailing rivers in the damp rocky dust.

She stood up at last and shook herself to find him standing in the trees, watching her.

She was surprised at how fast he had recovered. He stood tall, and his hair had grown out enough to resemble a messy version of his old hairstyle. The scars on his face were even healing. But this Lelouch lacked the pride to make him genuine. "Do I miss it?" C.C. mused to herself. Then she laughed.

He stepped forward into the grey light of the cloudy dawn.

And he took another step. Then another. And then another. He was one step away. He reached out a hand, and curved it around her face.

She started to speak in a sarcastic voice. "Don't tell me you're fall-"

And then his lips closed on hers.

* * *

"Who am I?" he asked later. He squinted into the sunlight, sitting rather like a frog, hands spread out on the sand. C.C. sat a distance away, staring at the sea. "Tell me."

C.C. sighed melodiously, almost like the way she did before. Almost. She eyed him with liquid honey eyes. "You'll remember someday," she said.

"I want you to tell me."

She sighed again, then ha! ed. She spread herself out on the sand, just out of Lelouch's reach. "No."

He propped himself onto his elbow. "Why?" His eyes smouldered; one orb gleamed scarlet.

"Because."

* * *

When the night came, she couldn't help herself. They slept together in a heap, arms around each other, in a messy bed of dried leaves. It was only practical; they needed to conserve warmth.

Warmth. C.C. would sigh into Lelouch's overgrown hair and ask herself just why she appreciated it. Even the word seemed something luscious. Warmth. C.C. had given up on warmth long ago.

Her half-lidded eyes snapped open and she rolled away, and he groaned, reaching out in his blind dreams for something missing.

C.C. pressed herself against the trunk of a nearby tree, sitting between two curved roots, and tried to use her hair as a blanket for her knees.

She thought back to the day she woke up in the shallows of the ocean but had not felt cold at all.

* * *

He became more persistent.

It was funny how the violet pupil seemed to pierce her more completely than the red one. But then again, the Geass never worked on her. She wondered if his madness was growing as they spoke; wondered if people on the other side of the world, on other islands, were searching for his identity, desperately hoping they could give him the truth he wanted.

But C.C. could only turn her back and continue searching for food. Or she fished. She was good at that.

He cornered her with two suspicious-looking green fruits in his hands, completely furious. "Tell me."

She dodged. "I don't know anything," she replied, meeting his gaze.

His eyes were fixated on hers. "I know you do."

"I don't. I really don't." She sauntered away tantalizingly as she spoke. "I just found you lying in the water one day. I have no idea who you are, where you came from, or why you're here."

And it was true in a way, C.C. thought with amusement. It was true in a way, after all.

* * *

Meanwhile, the days passed by feverishly, but to them it felt like everything moved in slow, slow motion.

One night, he called out her true name in his dream.

She stiffened. There, there it was again. C.C. covered her ears with her hands, rolling away from him. "Stop, Lelouch," she growled.

C.C. found the whole event entirely disgusting, and pretended that it had never happened.

* * *

When Lelouch's facial hair grew out of hand, C.C. laughed noisily and made fun of it. Eventually he tried to shave it off.

"It's too hard," he said, clearly displeased as well about the furry state of his face.

"I will help you," she offered, and held up her sharp rock.

He recoiled. "No, thank you."

"You don't trust me?" she asked.

"I trust you." He looked straight at her. "Just like I trust you when you say I will remember."

All of a sudden, C.C. fell silent. For once, she didn't know what to say.

* * *

To kill a god, one must make it fall in love with a mortal.

When the fated day finally arrived, they had been playing a game they constructed consisting of stones, shells, and fruit nuts.

But he did not ask her a single question about Nunnally, or the island, or even about what had happened. He simply said:

"I knew you would be able to tell as soon as I remembered everything," and it had been so familiar, the commanding way he called out her name as soon as she stood up, ready to disappear, upon seeing recognition in his eyes. "I lost everything, but I didn't forget how to read you," he said.

"Don't be so proud," C.C. responded. "You can't read me."

"I am getting better," he replied finally, in anguish.

C.C. looked at him sidelong. She sighed. "I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe I should have told you."

"No. You did not owe me that."

"Hm." C.C. said, pondering her next move.

Another pause. Then, "We will speak of this no more, C.C."

C.C. raised a whimsical eyebrow at him, but he said nothing else for the rest of the day.

* * *

Consumed by passion, the god will desire to be mortal himself. He cannot stand the idea of living forever without his love by his side.

And it was funny how things went on the same way they were before.

After Lelouch returned, he was just as lifeless as he had been before. He had no plans to escape, no questions to ask. It was as if his soul had been consumed in the explosion; when he found it again, it was nothing but a suit full of holes. But C.C. was not disappointed.

That didn't make sense, C.C. realized a moment later, so she stripped and went for a swim, hoping the clear water would seep in through her eyes and ears and clean her brain.

* * *

But what is living, anyway? For mortals, a day lived is a day died. And by this definition, what are immortals but souls stuck in time, creatures whose hearts cannot respond to the clock that ticks into eternity?

Lelouch and C.C. sat on the beach and stared at the ocean. Again. The sun scorched them with her relentless face.

"What will you do now, Lelouch?" she asked. Her question was a petal floating on the heavy air. "Will you die here?"

He answered with a plural pronoun, something C.C. thought was very funny.

"We'll..." he began to say.

But he never finished his sentence, and although she would have liked to know, C.C. never asked.

* * *

To kill a god, one must make it fall in love with a mortal.

Consumed by passion, the god will desire to be mortal himself. He cannot stand the idea of living forever without his love by his side.

But what is living, anyway? For mortals-

C.C. did not think about stupid things like this. Never. Ever.

But she trailed a rough, pearl-coloured hand in the salty ocean water and suddenly felt sad about dying.


End file.
